‘Creatures who adapt to their environment fly; if not, they become extinct. We are adapting and evolving.”

Rabbi Menashe Bovit, the new spiritual leader of the Conservative Bellrose Jewish Center, isn’t just referring to the survival-of-the-fittest law of the jungle. He’s also referring to the sometimes cruel, Darwin-esque nature of Jewish demographics in an ever-changing city. In this case the demographics of northeast Queens, an area on the Queens-Nassau border trying to claw back from the brink of extinction — Jewishly, that is.